Advancing water management through methods to assess environmental flow needs and improve stakeholder engagement

Effective governance that promotes sustainable use of water resources to maintain ecosystem integrity is challenging. Many regions do not have sufficient resources for water management or water for ecosystems is not protected under traditional legal mechanisms. The challenge of improving water governance for ecosystems is, therefore, twofold. First, there is a need to provide resources that build the capacity of water managers to allocate water to ecosystems. Second, mechanisms to promote the transformation of environmental flow needs into policy or practice are required. This research provides methods to advance water management by: 1) assessing environmental flow needs through creation of a geospatial database and 2) improving stakeholder engagement through lessons learned from three multi-year stakeholder engagement processes. In Paper 1, a review of 121 studies reveals that there are very few analyses of surface water and groundwater requirements for intermittent or ephemeral river systems, and there are only limited generalizable data for aquatic species. Paper 2 provides an empirical example of engagement to promote social learning as a way to preserve water for the environment when law does not protect environmental flows. Paper 3 presents a framework for designing effective stakeholder engagement that provides a flexible approach centered on a bridging organization that can bring people together and keep the engagement process moving forward. As illustrated through an evaluation of the three engagement projects, the proposed framework provides for inclusivity, interactiveness, and flexibility in engagement through guidance by a steering committee and iteratively examining the water resource management problem. Previous studies on water governance have focused predominantly on the identification of the current problems with governance. However, because humans have an important role in shaping the global water cycle, the time has come to focus on solutions. In order to further water management solutions, a better understanding of the tools needed to manage water for ecosystems and effective methods for co-producing knowledge or encouraging social learning are needed. This research provides a regional example of approaches to advance water management using a tool to assess environmental flows needs and frameworks for promoting common ground and social learning in stakeholder engagement.